Nicholas Packwood finds the next big acts from Britain’s Got Talent.
Susan Boyle, step aside
May 11th, 2009I like a good Scotch
May 11th, 2009I don’t get to indulge myself with the really good ones very often, and I doubt that I’ll ever have the chance to come closer to the best ones than the pictures that accompany this article.
Oh, boy!
May 11th, 2009Am I ever going to Hell!
Impressive
April 30th, 2009Years ago, I read the book Autumn Lightning: The Education of an American Samurai. One of the scenes I remember from the book is a description of an iaido exercise involving a simultaneous draw and strike that cuts through a falling dewdrop.
I was a lot younger then (Amazon’s listing is for the 2001 printing; there’s an earlier one from 1985), and I had difficulty imagining that such things could actually be done, or verified in a training environment. I could see hitting a raindrop, but splitting it? I thought it more an ideal to reach for, in a “the journey is the destination” sense.
Well, now I’ve seen something that removes any lingering doubt that I had. Some of what is done in this video can be verified just from the end results, but the use of a high-speed camera to provide super-slow motion shows how truly impressive a skilled practitioner can be.
I was surprised at how long it took before someone mentioned ‘Fremen’ in the comments.
April 29th, 2009I’m more surprised that someone would actually get an eyeball tattoo. Pictures at the link are not necessarily for the squeamish.
I’ll have to dig out my books of Harlan Ellison short stories. If I remember correctly, he mentions in an introduction to one story that part of its inspiration was his horror of contact lenses, because he had the idea that corneas needed to breathe.
The readings for today
April 29th, 2009First, Clay Shirky on deploying the cognitive surplus. I always enjoy things that make me look at something differently, and the idea of the cognitive surplus is one such thing.
Next, a more amusing piece of reading. I remember reading this a few years back, but I lost track of the link to it. Luckily, Bits and Pieces linked it today. It’s the sort of thing that I can easily imagine Dave Barry writing about. In other words, it’s both interesting and a little bit gross. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Worm Within.
Minimalist Art
April 28th, 2009A dead pixel for Google Earth.
The linked page was automatically translated into English, but the original page is available from it.
Eight and a half minutes
April 28th, 2009Bill Whittle on media bias, and well worth the time.
Camera, science … LIGHTS!
April 28th, 2009When I was in the Navy and sailing in the Pacific, I got to see bioluminescence in the ship’s wake – a blue glow in the water, with brighter “sparks” eddying around occasionally. Fascinating to watch, and I’d love to see it again. I’ve seen fireflies before, although they don’t hang around where I’m currently living, and I’ve never seen the asian fireflies that light up entire trees in unison. This post gives me those and a lot more things to hope to see someday, but none of them have the over-the-top-mad-scientist-cuteness-of-doom vibe of Ruppy, the light-uppy puppy.